Within the field of wearable devices, many scenarios involve devices with a set of integrated components, such as a helmet or eyewear featuring a display, a processor, an inertial measurement unit, and a battery. The components are often individually mounted to an interior surface of the device, and are interconnected with wires or flex circuits to enable the transfer of power and data among the components. The positions and/or orientations of the components are often carefully selected to promote the functionality of the devices; e.g., a positioning component may be affixed to a location that determines the orientation of the device, but may only be accurate if the actual position and orientation of the mounted positioning component match an expected position and orientation. In such cases, the relative position of the components to one another may be significant as well; e.g., a helmet device may feature two individual displays are positioned to present a stereoscopic view to each eye of the user, where even a small divergence in the positions and/or orientation of the displays relative to one another may disrupt the stereoscopic presentation.
In many such devices, the operation of the components produces significant amounts of heat, which may deform the substrate material of the device and damage the components. The generation of heat may be exacerbated by the proximity of the components to one another, as components are often packed tightly together within the interior of a device. Additionally, conveying heat away from the components may be limited and/or may be contrary to other design considerations. For example, techniques for venting the interior of the device conflict with sealing the housing to provide an airtight and water-resistant device, while material selection to promote heat dissipation may conflict with material selection to provide durability, shock and scratch resistance, transparency, and/or capacitive touch sensitivity for a surface of the device with an integrated display. These and other considerations may make it difficult to design and manufacture devices with integrated components that are also capable of managing the heat produced by the components integrated thereupon.